Quotes from John Berryman

The worse anyone feels, the worse treated he is. Fools elect fools.

The serious poet should seek to explore the 'sources' of these global nightmares-and to explore them not just in poetry, but in person. Poetry is a terminal activity, taking place out near the end of things.

He had tried everything, cutting down (many devices), pipes, cigars, even cold turkey. He had quit once in Rome, for seven hours after breakfast, during the last two of which his (first) wife was begging him to take it up again.

Springwater grow so thick it gonna clot and the pleasing ladies cease. I figure, yup, you is bad powers.

All souls converge upon a hopeless mote tonight, as though the throngs of souls in hopeless pain rise up to say they cannot care, to say they abide whatever is to come. My air is flung with souls which will not stop and among them hangs a soul that has not died and refuses to come home.

Is stuffed, de world, wif feeding girls.

That baby has got to learn things including remaining erect & on deck & all, her study of herself must include no wings. She's sturdy, beautiful, & she will do, unless the universal homage turns her head as it might well do mine, hypnotized by the Little Baby...

The only happy people in the world are those who do not have to write long poems

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball, What, what is he to do? I saw it go Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then Merrily over-there it is in the water!

He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody's missing. Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up. Nobody is ever missing.

Hard on the land wears the strong sea and empty grows every bed.

You come in all clammed up, defences in depth, alibi-systems long established, delusions full-blown. In order to have a chance of staying sober, or rather of staying dry and becoming sober, you've got to change. Nobody likes to change. What you really want, when you come into hospital, even for the second or third or ninth time, is to stay just who you are and not drink. That's not possible, of course. Jack-Who-Drinks has got to alter into Jack-Who-Does- Not -Drink- And -Likes-It.

Nouns, verbs do not exist for what I feel.

And there is another thing he has in mind like a grave Sienese face a thousand years would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly, with open eyes, he attends, blind. All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears; thinking.

Once in a sycamore I was glad all at the top, and I sang. Hard on the land wears the strong sea and empty grows every bed.

I ask for a decree dooming my bitter enemies to laughter advanced against them.

There was a time that crepuscular was mild, The hour for tea, acquaintances, and fall Away of day's difficulties, all Discouragement. Weep, you are not a child.

During those years he met his seminars, went & lectured & read, talked with human beings, paid insurance & taxes; but his mind was not on it. his mind was elsewheres in an area where the soul not talks but sings & where foes are attacked with axes.

I sniff a fire burning without outlet, consuming acrid its own smoke. It's me.

Pioneering is not feeling well, not Indians, beasts. Not all their riddling can forestall one leaving. Sam, your uncle has had to go fróm us to live with God. 'Then Aunt went too?' Dear, she does wait still. Stricken: 'Oh. Then he takes us one by one.

and if, 0 my love, my heart is breaking, please neglect my cries and I will spare you.

When by me in the dusk my child sits down I am myself. Simon, if it's that loose, let me wiggle it out. You'll get a bigger one there, & bite. How they loft, how their sizes delight and grate. The proportioned, spiritless poems accumulate. And they publish them away in brutish London, for a hollow crown.

Love her he doesn't but the thought he puts into that young woman would launch a national product complete with TV spots & skywriting outlets in Bonn & Tokyo I mean it

General Fatigue stalked in, & a Major-General, Captain Fatigue, and at the base of all pale Corporal Fatigue, and curious microbes came, came viruses: and the Court conferred on Henry, and conferred on Henry the rare Order of Weak.